


Forsythe Pendelton Jones the Second

by falicewins



Series: Falice One Shots by falicewins [14]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22600288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falicewins/pseuds/falicewins
Summary: The Inner Monologue about the life of Forsythe Pendleton Jones the Second
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II
Series: Falice One Shots by falicewins [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626064
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Forsythe Pendelton Jones the Second

[tw: alcoholism, abuse, suïcidal thoughts]

Besides Alice's soft breathing their bedroom was completely silent. FP peaked at their alarm clock and saw that the time had stroke two in morning already. Even when he was exhausted, he just couldn't fall asleep. He pressed his head deeper into his pillow before he looked to the woman sleeping next to him, peacefully asleep. If there was time and if the world would let him he could stare at her being asleep forever.

There was a storm raging inside him, but seeing her lying next to him looking so innocent and sweet made her somehow have a calming effect on him, without her doing anything. Maybe it was because for the first time in his life he had actually someone to sleep next to that he could confide in, that was a mate, someone who would always be there.

He could rationalize why he shouldn't be afraid of her leaving anytime soon since they were in it for the long haul now, but the voice in his head told him that he should look at her as long as possible, just in case that would all be taken away from him one day.

The only way he could sleep right now was on his back because of the fresh shot wound he had got yesterday night, but it wasn't the aching pain in his arm that was bothering him right now. It were his other thoughts that were keeping him wide awake, there were other demons whispering things in his ear that frightened him a way he had never known before.

The words of his son echoed through his mind, telling him that his father had left, again. For so long he had buried the thought of his father in the back of his mind, so far away that he could barely reach it, but now Jughead had started a hunt to find him everything came back boiling up.

It felt like he would never escape him. For the first time ever he had his life back on track in a way that he could say with full confidence that he felt happy. Before he would have never told someone that he knew what happiness was, because he simply didn't. But now everything had changed.

It had come to him in baby steps, but he got there. Not fully on his own, but at some point he needed to set his pride aside to accept the help to better his life. It was impossible to fight those demons all by himself.

Looking at Alice his mind drifted to the moment their story had started again. She was there when he got released from jail. There was a sparkle there that neither of them could deny, but admitting it out loud was way more difficult than pretending it wasn't there.

While being in jail he had started AA, as he was learning to stay away from drinking so his son could move back in. He never wanted to go back to prison again and he knew that this was his last chance with Jughead to make things right. It was now or never.

He thought about the steps he made and how all of them had been to make him proud again. To look at his son and see that same sparkle again, with eyes that told him they were proud. FP had given up on himself longer before, but just because there was one person in the world who didn't he managed to survive.

They had a long way to go but slowly they had worked on their bond for Jughead to find the trust in his dad back again. And he did. They seemed stronger than ever now they tried to let go of the past forever. But could you ever let go of the past? Would Jughead ever forgive him for the way he had treated him? How he became homeless because his dad couldn't keep his hands of the bottle?

The moment he was send off to jail for covering up the murder of Jason Blossom something inside him changed for good. He could have easily rotted in there for the rest of his life, which wouldn't have bothered him if he knew Jughead was safe. After all, it seemed his destiny to wind up a screw up since he was raised by one.

Jail was where he belonged, together with the rest of the scum who suffered the same fate. It was what he thought he had deserved after the way he treated everyone around him. But Jughead did the impossible. He fought for his old man. He fought for him to have the lowest sentence as possible. He believed in him in a way he had never believed in himself and it made him see that he could never blew the connection he had with his son ever again.

When he got the chance to bond with his son again he just knew he would never waste that once more. FP Jones has made a lot of mistakes, but that wasn't going to be one of them. He had done a lot of awful things during his time as Serpent King, but covering up a murder was by far the worst thing he had ever done in his entire life, but if he had to do it once again to save his son he would do it without a second thought.

It was the second chance he thought he would never get, and never deserved. But there he was, sitting in the booth he had always sat in as a teenager with his son sitting next to him and Alice and Betty sitting across of them. So that's when he started to work at Pop's and retired from the Serpents to finally start his new life. How that life was going to look like was still out in the open, but a fresh start was everything he needed.

It had been a turning point in his life, but it didn't mean his life became less of a rollercoaster. That same year Alice came walking back into his life, even if she was still married to the one man on this planet that he couldn't stand: Hal Cooper.

It wasn't only because he had made Alice into something she wasn't, but he knew deep down that their marriage wasn't a happy one. Not because he knew the details, but after being in an unhealthy marriage for so long he knew what it looked like on other people.

For a long time Alice seemed to be just a ghost from the past that visited it in his dreams, or nightmares, once in a while. She knew him, she knew who he was, she knew his fears, his doubts, his dreams. And while that should have been a blessing, it was scaring him in a way that it was easier to fight with her than to admit that she could read him like a book.

Not that long ago after the building tension between them she came to him for help. And not just any help. Her long lost son had murdered a man in her kitchen and now both her and her daughter needed help to clean up the mess.

The shocking thing was that he had never even doubted for a second that he would help her. Covering up a murder, one of the worst things he had done with his hands and taking the risk to go back to jail after he had just been released was something he did for her in heartbeat.

He had made his fair share of mistakes, and he would doing anything to protect her from suffering the same fate he did with Jason Blossom. Alice Cooper didn't deserve to go to jail, not even after everything she had put him through. He would go back to jail if he had to if it meant keeping her save.

At that time he hadn't even realised how much he had sacrificed for her, her daughter and his son at that moment. She needed him, so he was there. It didn't matter how much she had sneered to him the last few months, or how she had left without a trace when they had been in high school. He would still do that, without a second thought. There had always been something about her that made it worth risking everything for. They took care of their own.

It was not long after that he realised feelings between them had been buried deep down for a very long time, but started to shook lose faster than he had imaged. There was no one on earth he would take such a big risk for, but she was Alice. His Alice. Or at least, she had been his Alice at some point in his life and he wasn't able to let that go, not just yet, not maybe ever.

There wasn't time to think about that, because not long after burying the body for her she had been standing on his front porch, with her intentions loud and clear. She wanted him. He knew her. He knew that when it came to feelings, to serious things, even Alice Cooper wasn't good with words anymore. She had always had her word ready when it was about outsiders, but this time words couldn't describe the apology she wanted to give him. Her body was the thing that would make clear how thankful she was.

It became a turning point in their relationship, after he had thrown out his gum with her practically standing in his bedroom already, unbuttoning her own blouse. He hadn't said any words. Before she had the chance to fully undress herself he had kissed her in a way like he was trying to make up for lost time.

Everything about that night was hot, steamy, passionate and tender. After being with her, even for just one night, he had felt again how he needed her to be a part of his life. She made him feel alive again, made him feel needed, maybe even felt loved for a bit.

But FP Jones never got the time to even think about what he and Alice would mean in the future. There was so much going on in his life that his romantic relationship with Alice couldn't be his priority. Surviving was. On top of that she dropped a big bombshell on him. They shared a son. Not only she had given birth to him in high school, she confessed that she thought she had killed him after turning him away the moment he had knocked on her door.

''I killed our son.''

Those words still echoed through his mind, as he couldn't believe what she had told him. All he could hear was how he had driven her away, into the arms of Hal Cooper, into the life that she didn't want to be a part of anymore. He was the one that made her so broken. He was the one responsible for her hurt.

He had to live with the information that he had a child with the woman he had been in love with his whole life, but could never see since he wasn't alive anymore. She had broken down in front of him and even when there had been going a thousand questions through his mind he needed to comfort her first.

Her sobs had gone as a knife through his soul as he had pulled her to his chest and hear her repeat that she killed their son. How could he ever live with the thought that he was responsible for the way she had ran into Hal's trap? How could he live with the thought that he messed up the life of a child that he didn't even know of until now?

As if that wasn't enough, he and Alice slowly started dating after that moment, finally having real conversations without going at each other's throats which led to a secret affair that they tried to hide from their kids as good as possible. Nobody needed to know as long as they didn't know how to label their situation. It was the start of them opening up to each other, and in those few stolen moments he had realised that he was hopelessly in love with her.

''This feels right, doesn't it?''

And it did. Everything about it felt right. The way she would make him feel as she smiled, the way their bodies fitted together perfectly as if they were made for each other, the way he felt he regained something back that he would describe as happiness, the way he now woke up next to someone he genuinely loved.

But this was still FP Jones, and FP Jones wasn't the one to say that out loud. So it stayed with secret hook-ups when the kids weren't home, without labeling their relationship just yet. It was working out fine for them, until the moment Gladys decided to show up back in Riverdale after being absent for years.

In the meantime he had become the Sheriff and despite the fact that he got the position in an illegal way, it felt like part of the new start he was building towards. For a moment he seemed to almost have it all. He had his son back into his life, he had a well-paid job that could finally serve peace between the north and the south side and he and Alice were figuring things out. The only missing piece was his daughter Jellybean.

When Gladys came back she had joined her, and he was forever grateful that she started to open up to him more. Since his heart had started to belong to Alice, or maybe it had always belonged to her, there was nothing left more between him and his wife.

He slept on the couch for weeks, until she announced that they would move to Elm Street. FP had never meant for things to get so serious, especially when he thought it was going to be a short stay, but to make things worse Gladys seemed to have bought Alice's old house.

Living on Elm Street had always been his biggest dream, and even when that dream seemed so close now it felt like he was living in a total nightmare again. Gladys shouldn't be the one for him to live in that house with.

He had always imagined that one day he would move there with Alice, cuddling on the couch together after a work day, doing the dishes together, raising their kids in that house. But this was Gladys standing in front of him, telling him that this was their future. His throat had tightened and he could barely breathe.

Once again, FP Jones didn't get the time to think. Part of him wanted to scream and tell Gladys the truth, but he was too weak to do so. He was too much of a coward to tell that his heart belonged to someone else. He was stuck in a web and he had no idea of how to get out of there without hurting his kids.

There was no time to figure out a plan, as that same afternoon Alice's had visited him and asked him the one thing that he was so afraid of. Not because he didn't know the answer. He knew what he was feeling for her, but he couldn't give her that.

''And me? Do you love me?''

The voices in his head had screamed louder than he thought they could. Yes, Alice. Yes. Yes. Yes. I do love you. I do want to be with you. I do want to make this work. But no. He just couldn't.

His feelings were clear to him for the very first time in his life now she asked him straight away what it was between them. God, he loved her. Every bone in his body loved her. But he knew he couldn't say that out loud. He wanted her to know, but being honest with her and then breaking up with her would hurt her way worse.

He had promised himself to turn his life around. To be a good father. To be someone that both Jughead and Jellybean could be proud of. He had screwed up so many times. If he were his own son, he would have given up on him a long time ago.

But Jughead didn't, so this time he couldn't give up on him, not after fighting for so long. There was just one wish he hadn't fulfilled. Bringing the family back together. It was the only thing left he had promised his son to do for him, and he couldn't break that promise. He would hate himself even more than he already did if he would break the promise. Now he was so close to fulfill a dream like that he couldn't back out.

Besides, a woman like Alice deserved better. In his eyes she settled for a high school lover who left her high and dry the moment she had needed him the most. If he had been different back in the day, if he hadn't felt the need to screw around, if he hadn't backed out because of his commitment issues their lives would have been different.

Alice wasn't the one that killed Charles. He felt like he was the one that was responsible for his death. He should have talked to her when he knew something was off. He should have talked to her when she started dating Cooper and abandoned her past. But he didn't.

He pretended to not care and move on with his life, even if he had lost the person closest to his heart. She knew everything about him, and yet he had to be a stupid stubborn teenage boy afraid of his feelings for a girl. He had killed their son.

He wasn't worthy of her love in any way. He couldn't see why she would even want to be with him after the way he treated her, how he let her run into the arms of a serial killer. It would be best for everyone if he would break things off. She could find someone who wasn't a screw up, and he could make the two children that he had left proud.

So instead of telling the truth he chose to do something different. He collected all his strength to do the impossible.

''It doesn't matter now. It's over. I'm sorry.''

Two out of three things he said to her were a lie, but the last thing he said was true. He was sorry, in a way he couldn't even describe. He was sorry for hurting her, and not just in that very moment. He was sorry for all the times he had hurt her. He was sorry for turning her life upside down more than once. He was sorry for loving her when she deserved someone better than him. 

With everything he got he tried to not burst out into tears and he couldn't look into her eyes as he saw the tears streaming down her face. She had left without another word and that seemed to be the end. It was the end of everything that had happened between them the last twenty five years. She was free now, free from her past, free of him, free to start over, he thought.

It was easiest for him to not contact her at all and throw himself into work as he tried to be away from Gladys as much as possible. He could feel Alice's presence in every corner of the room.

The couch reminded him off the few stolen moments they had made love on there to snuggle up against each other afterwards during their affair, and the kitchen island remembered him of the few times she had made him breakfast if he had stayed over when Betty wasn't home.

This was his life now. His kids were happy, even if he felt haunted by the house he was living in with the woman his heart didn't belong to. If he had to, he would sacrifice his own happiness for as long as he had to if that would mean he could give his kids the life they always wanted.

Everything changed when his wife stabbed him in the back, risking the life of their daughter and only using his new position as Sheriff to protect herself from getting caught as Riverdale's new drug lord. It was the eye opener he needed to see that Gladys was the one in the wrong this time.

He had sent her away back to Toledo as Jellybean stayed with him. It was an easy option to sent her to jail since the proof was solid but after all she still was the mother of his children. It felt like the part of the rollercoaster where you were going down in high speed and it seemed to never end. He had lost everything.

Gladys was the one breaking the family, but he couldn't do anything else than to blame himself for that. He was the one sending her away, when he could let her live in the house like nothing happened. But to do that she just went too far. She had almost costed him his daughter and that was something unforgivable.

But yet it made him feel like he couldn't fulfill the wish of the kids they had left. At the same time Alice was soaked up by the Farm she had told him about and seemed to be lost forever. He had to live with the idea that from now on it was just going to be him, Jughead and Jellybean. Even if he still couldn't say he felt happy, his kids were safe and that was all that mattered.

Things were slowly going back to normal, but of course things in the life of Forsythe Pendelton Jones the Second would never be calm for a long amount of time. Betty had started living with them and she was no different than his son. He hadn't seen it, but they had been investigating The Farm to turn Edgar Evernever in, and that all became clear when the impossible happened.

That one particular night Alice had been standing on his front porch. But she wasn't alone. There was a young man standing next to her. Her face was injured and Betty brought her into the living room, as they started to explain what happened.

Barely a year after receiving the news of their son and him being dead, he was now facing Charles Smith, FBI agent and working undercover with his mother. He was alive. Their son was standing right in front of him and above that all he just heard that Alice had been working with him for over months without even telling him.

Was he mad? Was he disappointed? Was he happy? One thing was for sure. He was overwhelmed with all the new information. For months he had blamed himself for being the one responsible for his death, but now the boy that had haunted both his dreams and nightmares was standing right in front of him. Was this another second chance? Could he make things right with Alice? Could he ever make up for ruining Charles's life?

Alice was alive, and he was forever grateful for that. It didn't took him long to figure out that he could have lost her for good, so now there were no things in their way anymore he knew this was his time to proof what she meant to him and never let her go ever again.

It took some long talks, being open, being vulnerable, for both of them to see that it was time to forgive. They couldn't change the past, but they could write their own future together. So they did.

And now, the woman he was writing his future with, who had been part of his story from chapter one and is definitely going to be part of all the chapters that were yet to come was sleeping besides him.

She was everything he had ever dreamed of. Everything he thought he didn't deserve. But she was there. And so were his three children, with the beautiful addition of Betty, who felt like his own now too.

It felt like he had everything. The girl, his three wonderful kids who he couldn't be more proud of, the house on Elm Street, his job as the Sheriff and back as Serpent King. All his dreams had come true. There was someone next to him who supported him and who unconditionally loved him, he was a father his kids could be proud of and he found his way back to his south side roots. 

But he wouldn't be FP Jones if that would last for long. At the moment he started to embrace his destiny to lead the Serpents that had been part of his life for so long, an old ghost had crawled his way back into his life again.

Jughead had started a quest to dig into the past of his old man to figure out whether his teacher Mr. Dupont had stolen the first plot of the Baxter Brother series from his grandfather, which gave FP no other choice than to think about him again.

Now the room was filled with more sound than Alice's breathing. It took him a few second to discover what it was, until he recognized the sound of his own quiet cries. His sight got blurry and his body started shaking now the emotions took over him. FP Jones wasn't a man who cried. But now he hadn't even noticed that he started crying when everything was coming down to him at once.

Alice was a light sleeper, and he didn't want to wake her with his spiraling thoughts, so he carefully got out of bed to walk downstairs and lay himself down on the couch so his cries couldn't possibly wake her up.

He could barely see with the tears in his eyes ready to fall down again. It was almost impossible to wipe away the tears on his cheeks before new ones were coming. He laid down on his back, trying to not hurt his arm injury and thought back to the discovery of his old man being alive because his son couldn't let things be.

Jughead is everything to him. So if this was what he felt like doing as writer who wanted to protect his family's legacy than he wasn't going to hold him back. All of that didn't mean it wasn't difficult to accept the fact that his son was portraying his father as some kind of hero who had suffered injustice because of a novel he had written. His boy saw him as a heroic writer who had lost something that could have brought him millions. But to FP he was everything but that.

The Baxter Brothers was one of the reasons FP was where he was now. In a way it was his biggest demon and now his son had the chance to be the newest ghost writer. He would support him in every way, even if it meant that something that had caused him so much pain was now the reason Jughead got the biggest opportunity of his life.

The hurt was done. The past couldn't be rewritten. But Jughead's future was still an unwritten book, that FP could help write if he would push his feelings about the Baxter Brothers books aside, and be the supportive dad his father never was.

The book about the life of FP Jones was already written for the biggest part, and those words could never be erased, but he could be part of his sons book the way his dad never was in his. It brought his demon into another light, maybe even in a way that it could turn into an angel when it was now still connected to the devil himself.

His son wouldn't be his son if he hadn't hunt him down to find his old man. Jughead had heard his side of the story. The books were sold to Dupont for five thousand dollars before it became worth millions. Forsythe Senior had admitted that from that moment he outed the anger he felt towards the Baxter Brothers on his only son and his wife. Until one point he decided to go out for some cigarettes and never come back, so it would be better for everyone.

His son had slowly started the conversation of the possibility of him stopping by to talk for the first time in over twenty years, and even if FP shouldn't have wanted it there was a part of him that hoped that things would have changed. He was an abuser, a life ruiner, a mean drunk who had no right to ever lay a hand on him or his mother, but it was his old man after all.

How was it possible for him to even feel that way? This man had power over him his whole life, destroyed every tiny chance for him to make something of his life, and played the lead in all his trauma's.

But still, something deep down there was a spark of hope, that one day they could grow past that. It wasn't about forgiveness, it was about being able to look him in the eyes and not feel the need to do the exact same thing to him.

That little spark was curious about what he had become. He already knew that he was living at Seaside, so he had been awfully close all those years without having the guts to show up and try to make things better. No, instead he had been living in an old bus drinking all his sorrows away just like he used to do. Only now he and his mother weren't a target anymore.

His father bailing on him was the greatest gift he had ever received from him. The first year it seemed like a victory, like he was gone out of his life for good. He could start living, instead of surviving. But that wasn't true at all.

He would learn that what his father did to him would haunt him for the rest of his life. The worst part hadn't come yet, and everything would work its way through his life. There was no need in celebrating the fact that he wasn't coming back, because he really never was gone in the first place. The wounds that he had left them weren't going to heal anytime soon, and even if they did they would be a painful scar for as long as they would live.

The moment the first wound got carved into FP's soul had been at a young age. He had just started his freshman year at Riverdale High when one casual beer after work became two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, until he couldn't keep count anymore. Forsythe senior would go out to the Whyrm after dinner and not return until the midst of the night.

That would never go unnoticed by his wife and his son, since he made quite the entrance whenever he came home. Slamming doors, shoving the furniture, brabbling words in a volume that he could wake up the whole trailer park with and the sound of the TV as loud as possible so FP couldn't close an eye at night.

At that time FP thought that it couldn't get more out of hand than it already did with his dad being constantly drunk, until one night he learned that his alcoholism was just the beginning of something way more awful yet to come.

His mother, the most caring, loving and beautiful soul that he knew was trying to make him better, she saw her husband's good side and she would never stop seeing that. Not even if after what happened that one particular night their lives turned upside down.

Forsythe coming home in the middle of the night was a regular thing by now, but as she tried to sat him down on the couch to spread a blanket over him and carefully try to open him up about the Baxter Brothers he had pushed her away as harshly as he could, so she crashed into their dinner table.

FP had been standing in the opening of his bedroom door, and witnessed every tiny movement his parents had made. From the loving gesture of his mother to the strong push of his father who growled loudly as his hand shoved her all the way from the couch to their dining table. The first few seconds he just stood there, totally paralysed by what he just saw. His dad had never laid a hand on them before.

Forsythe didn't pay any attention to his wife crumbled down almost under the table now, trembling with fear and quit sobs leaving her mouth. FP got snapped out of the trance hearing her cry so he ran over towards her, kneeling in front of his mom, so he could look at her properly. 

''If you dare to take that cursed name into your mouth once again I'll show you what I think of that. You are warned now. Both of you are.''

Even if he was totally wasted, the words were loud and clear, but FP couldn't pay attention to that now. His mother was his first priority. Her hands had clutched into those of her son, squeezing them as hard as she could to remain herself from totally breaking down.

''Have you seen what you've done?!''

He had shot out in anger for the first time in his life to one of his parents, but hurting his mother this way was the last straw for him to be done with his dad's behaviour. How could a fifteen year old boy be more responsible than his own father? He was supposed to be a careless teenager, playing football, drinking milkshakes at Pop's, but now he was a boy who needed to handle his drunken father who had dared to abuse his mother.

''Don't you dare to raise your voice at me, boy!''

His dad had gotten up, barely able to stand with a bottle of beer clenched into his hands as if he was afraid to drop it, and walked over to FP to face him. They were equally tall now, but FP wasn't afraid, yet. That was about to come.

''Or else? How in the devil's name did it ever come up into that sick, drunk, brain of yours to lay a hand on her, huh? Just because you don't have your fucking shit together--''

There it was. The fist of his father had reached his jaw and now he stumbled backwards, finding his balance as his hand reached the table. His vision became blurry, and for a second he thought he was going to black out, but the spots he was seeing were slowly disappearing.

He had never thought this would ever happen. His dad actually hit him. And it wasn't just a slap. It was a punch that would bruise for weeks, that maybe even gave permanent damage. His face was aching in a way he had never felt before, not even after a rough football match.

And the worst part? There was not one little sign of regret on his face. This was who his father had become now. And abusive mean drunk who thought he could lay a hand on his family. FP felt his lips tremble and his throat tighten, but he didn't want his dad to give him the satisfaction of him breaking down. That would be a victory, and he wasn't going to give him that.

He turned around to his mom, and realised that he needed to be strong for her too. He couldn't break down. Never again. FP Jones couldn't cry. Not in front of his dad. Not in front of his mom. Not in front of anybody. It was a promise he made with himself in just a matter of seconds as he wiped away the tears in his eyes and cleared his throat as he kneeled down again. He handed his mother and arm to help her stand up and supported her towards his bedroom without giving his old man another look. From now on he had to carry the biggest secret of all.

That one night had just been the beginning of his father beating him up over practically nothing. Did he fail for his test? Did they lose the football game? Did he forget to buy cigarettes? Did he park his motorbike the wrong way? He would show him the consequences.

It didn't stay with just one punch. It escalated with FP totally broken in the middle of his bedroom, in fetal position trembling like a scared little child, covering his head with his arms to prevent him from giving him serious damage.

But one day, his old man did something that would change his life forever. It had been after they had lost their senior opening game. FP was captain of the Bulldogs, which gave him the pressure for his team to win. Not only because he wanted to make them proud, but he knew his father would snap if they lost. And so they did.

FP came home, knowing what was waiting for him and then it happened. The words were echoing through his mind, but it was mostly just a vague collection of yelling, hearing that he was an embarrassment, that he didn't deserve to have the Jones name, that he was a scandal for the family, that he had always known he was a worthless piece of shit.

His dad had thrown him against the wall, pushed him back with his arm pressing on his chest and had punched him until the moment he almost lost his conscious. He wished he had, so it all would have been over, but the fact that he still wasn't passed out only spurred senior on to go on until the job was done.

The blood was streaming out of his nose by now, leaving red stains on his Bulldog uniform, as he fell on the ground and his dad's foot hit his wrist multiple times. He tasted his own blood into his mouth, which should have tasted like iron, but all he could taste was failure, something he deserved to feel right now.

It was his fault that his father beat the hell out of him. He had earned it. He should have fought harder during the game. He should work harder at school. His dad was right. He was an embarrassment. He was a big failure who would be stuck here forever. The taste of the blood in his mouth was the proof that everything his dad was yelling to him was right.

The aching pain that flowed through his body the second it happened had told him enough. This was serious. This wasn't an injury that was going to heal. He didn't need a doctor to know that what his father just did to his arm was going to throw away his only chance on a scholarship, his only chance to get out of this hell hole.

FP's shoulders were shocking, which made his current injury ache, but he couldn't care about that right now. He looked down at his right wrist and even if there was no trace left of the injury that had changed his life for good, he could still feel it every day.

He tried to regular his breath, but with the panic going through his body like a tornado he just wasn't able to. It felt like he was choking on his own sobs, as if he literally was drowning in his own tears. The only chance of ever escaping Riverdale had been taken away from him. He was stuck there. Forever.

As if his father knew that he had changed the future of his only son for good, he took his stuff and never returned again. FP could finally breathe now he was gone, but things would never get back to the way it was. He would never be able to forgive how he had taken away his chance to be the first Jones man to go to college. It had been his only dream, to make the family, to make his father proud. But now the man that he wanted to make proud so badly was the one who had taken that away from him in just a split second.

After his mom died not long after he graduated he joined the army to be as far away from Riverdale as he could be. Without her he had nothing left to stay for. He could out his anger in learning how to use a gun and for a long time that coping mechanism helped. When possible he imagined shooting his father for everytime that he had beaten him or his mother up. He wanted him to pay, even if it was just in his imagination.

For a while it worked, until he came back after five years and settled down. He had always dreamed of having a family so when Gladys came along and he knocked her up he decided that it was the best thing if he would marry her and so they got Jughead. Fred was planning on starting his own company now his father had passed away and asked FP to be co-owner now he knew he was having a little one on the way, just as he and Mary were.

FP had his life together. He had a job, he rejoined the Serpents after returning from the army, became King, and got his first born, that he knew of in that time, and later he got a baby girl that wasn't planned either.

It wasn't close to the way he had ever imagined since he was still stuck on the south side, but it was doable. But was that a way to live? Being haunted by the ghost of your father who had the power over the biggest plotline in his book? The more years came by, the more he realised that he wasn't happy, not even close to it.

He was married to a woman he didn't really love. He was living in the trailer that was haunted by everything that his father had ever done to him, and the Serpents were in big trouble so he had to steal from his own company to give them a roof above their head. FP was in deep shit, but there was nowhere to go. Not with a son and daughter at home, not with a wife.

Then he hold onto the only other coping mechanism he had ever know in his life: drinking. Grabbing the bottle was so much easier than actually facing his demons now it let him forget everything. Slowly he started to develop the same addiction he had always abhorred for so long. He hadn't seen the red flag, the signals that one day he was just as bad as his old man.

Just one thing was different. He had never laid a hand on one of his kids or his wife. And he never would. He thought that it made him better than his father, but he was still failing his family just as much as his old man had done. In the lowest point of his life he had slowly become another version of his father, which only confirmed for him that everything his old man ever said to him was true.

He was worthless. He didn't deserve to go to college. He didn't deserve to live in anything else but a trailer. He would never find someone who would love him. He was someone that people hated, someone that stirred things up, someone that caused trouble. Every word that he had said to him was true.

The more he drank the more he realised that this wasn't a way to live, but the alcohol was just too good. The way it made him forget, the way he could fall asleep of it, the way it silenced the voice of his father screaming into his head, the way he could escape life because of it.

FP lost his job when Fred found out he had been stealing and Gladys left and took their daughter Jellybean with her. Jughead wanted to stay and be there for him, and so he did. But even for Jughead it all became too much and he chose living on the streets over living with his old man.

It was the lowest point in his life. He didn't have a job anymore, his wife and daughter left, and he couldn't give his son the future he deserved. He couldn't survive the day without at least ten beers and that drove him so far that at some point he just wanted to end it all.

Everything would be better once he wouldn't be there anymore. He wouldn't disappoint his wife, his kids, his best friend, the Serpents, his mom who was looking down on him and even his father anymore.

Everyone who had ever given him a chance, who ever believed in him, had been wrong in his eyes since he always had managed to stab them right in their heart. Was there something left to live for? Everyone had left him, and he didn't blame them for that.

He knew that taking his own life could be easily done, and there were a few times where the screaming voices in his head, telling him that he should do it, that it was what he deserved, that it would better everyone's lives once he was gone, were hard to ignore.

He had done nothing but to screw up everyone's life once stepped into them, even the life of the woman he married, even the life of the two people in the world he loved more than he would ever love himself.

Tall Boy had given him just enough pills to end it once and for all, but there was a reason he didn't do it. Even with Jughead on the streets and his urge to help himself out of his own misery and being reunited with his mother again, he just couldn't do it.

He was a fighter, but he been just one step away from giving up for real, until he realised that there was still someone fighting for him. He knew Jughead loved him, he knew Jughead wanted him to get better.

For a few years he had been the only kid he had left now Gladys didn't let him see Jellybean. With Jughead leaving and Clifford Blossom breathing in his neck he realised that he had to do everything to protect his only kid left.

Jellybean was safe, but Jughead was far from it. Even if it meant confessing a murder he didn't commit he would do that in a heartbeat to spare the life of his son. He was the only light in his life that was left, his only hope, his only view on a way out.

He couldn't care about rotting in jail, maybe he could even end it there, as long as he knew Jughead wasn't going to get hurt. Clifford threatening him with his own life didn't bother him, it was when he took Jughead's name into his mouth that changed everything.

So that's when he confessed the murder. It was his life for Jughead's. He could never see him again and needed to push him away as far as possible to let him get away from the curse of the Jones men.

Jughead was a bright kid. Maybe even the brightest kid the Jones family had ever seen. He couldn't ruin his future the way his old man did to him. He was in charge of the pen now. He could write the chapters.

As he sat on the couch, with in mind that he once was at a point to step out of his life, and everything turning upside down to bring him where he was now, he had given his son the support to write the next Baxter Brothers book.

Everything that had happened to him, from being beaten up, breaking his wrist, to not being able to go college, joining the army, marrying Gladys, becoming an alcoholic, covering up Jason's murder, going to jail, working at Pop's, becoming Sheriff, dating Alice, breaking-up with Alice, moving to Elm Street, getting his long lost son back and his life and getting back with Alice for the second time, had all started the moment his father had written and sold the first Baxter Brothers book.

He needed to turn his biggest demon into something good, something that was his son's biggest blessing. Maybe if that all worked out he would be able to face his father again and not wanting pay back. Maybe then he could accept the way his book was written.

FP rested his hands in his head and rubbed his eyes to wipe away the last tears that had escaped. It had been ages since he had cried for the last time. But now his life was coming back to a point where he had to face his darkest trauma's again he couldn't stop himself anymore.

It felt like everything was coming together. His old man, his own son, a Jones man going to college, the Baxter Brothers, the house on Elm Street, his job as the town's Sheriff, being Serpent King, and being with the woman he had loved so long. Maybe it was always supposed to be this way. Maybe his book had been already written till the end.

''What are you doing up?'' Alice's soft voice filled the living room now, as her eyes were still processing her surroundings. 

He looked up from staring at his shaking hands and there was a surprised look on his face and maybe he was even a little shocked that she was up now too, and saw him so broken when he wasn't prepared for that. ''The bed was cold without you.'' She answered his unasked question.

Now she could finally see everything properly his red puffy eyes met her sleepy blue ones she could see that he had been crying for a while now.

''Hey, what's going on?'' She fastened her walk and sat down on the couch next to him, placing one hand on his knee and the other hand on his back to slowly start rubbing circles.

FP was silent for a few seconds, as his lips started to tremble again. He couldn't look at her. Not after he had never broken down in front of her. FP Jones didn't cry.

''It's--'' He took a breath as he could feel his throat tighten. ''It's everything. Jughead is going to sign the Baxter Brothers contract. He is going to be the new ghostwriter.'' It was one simple sentence that would explain everything.

There was no one besides Alice who knew what the Baxter Brothers series meant to FP and the story of his life. She knew it was his biggest demon, and now it was going to be Jughead's greatest blessing.

''Did he talk to you about it? Does he know?'' She asked carefully as she stroke her hand up and down his thigh. Alice had never seen him like this before, not even as teenagers when they used to come together after his dad had beaten him. There was something deeper about this, that was way more than about just emotional hurt.

FP nodded slowly. ''He knows. He asked my old man to come around, but once again he bailed.'' He croaked out, clenching his fist together. Alice grabbed his hand as his knuckles turned white.

''Are you sure you are okay with this? Maybe you should talk to him about it again, baby. This isn't a decision you should make overnight. It's about summoning your demons back into your life. Jughead is everything to you, but I can't see you suffer because of it.'' He rested the side of his head against hers and nuzzled closely to her as he wrapped his injured arm around her.

''It's time to turn it around, Alice.'' He whispered quietly after a few minutes of silence.

''That demon is going to be turned in something good. Something Jughead will be proud of. Something he'll tell his kids about when they grow up. The curse of the Baxter Brothers needs to end. The curse of the Jones men is going to end.'' He said quietly.


End file.
